Natsheh Family - Glass Blowers
Location: Hebron, West Bank
Portrait of a Glassblower
“Tip their mouths open to the sky.
Turquoise, amber,
the deep green with fluted handle,
pitcher the size of two thumbs,
tiny lip and graceful waist.”
--Naomi Shihab Nye
Hebron, a city in the West Bank, is not a great distance from Tsfat in Americam miles, but it is in culture and atmosphere. Sacred to Muslims, Jews and Christians, this West Bank city is plagued with a history of violence created by a clash between the Palestinians and 500-800 Israeli settlers protected by a few thousand Israeli troops. To understand more about Hebron and its complex situation click on this link which will take you to a B'tselem article.Glass blowing in Hebron began during Roman times, but the current tradition owes more to the 14th century and Venice or possibly Syria. The conflict and occupation definitely affect the glass blowing tradition and art of Hebron. There is a “glass blower quarter” in the old city, but tourists visit the two glass and ceramic factories, owned and operated by the Natsheh family, outside the city. As well as using materials from local areas like the Dead Sea, the factory I visited and technique I videoed, also use recycled glass to create their beautiful beads, windows, goblets, and ornaments. With only one or two fans providing relief, workers create next to a 700°C hot oven.
Although the products have evolved to suit the current tourist trade, they come from a tradition of objects used for daily needs such as olive oil lamps, bowls, and cups. Sometimes fishermen used the glass balls in their nets. The Bedouins prized the glass for jewelry and sometimes the glass was used for “amulets to protect people or homes from the evil eye.”
In the following video, an artisan creates a Hebron vase and explains his craft.
Naomi Shihab Nye, the Palestinian-American poet living in San Antonio Texas, has written a beautiful poem about Hebron glass.`
The Small Vases From Hebron
By Naomi Shihab Nye (with permission of the author)
Tip their mouths open to the sky.
Turquoise, amber,
the deep green with fluted handle,
pitcher the size of two thumbs,
tiny lip and graceful waist.
Here we place the smallest flower
which could have lived invisibly
in loose soil beside the road,
sprig of succulent rosemary,
bowing mint.
They grow deeper in the center of the table.
Here we entrust the small life, thread,
fragment, breath.
And it bends. It waits all day.
As the bread cools and the children
open their gray copybooks
to shape the letter that looks like
a chimney rising out of a house.
And what do the headlines say?
Nothing of the smaller petal
perfectly arranged inside the larger petal
or the way tinted glass filters light.
Men and boys, praying when they died,
fall out of their skins.
The whole alphabet of living,
heads and tails of words, sentences,
the way they said,
“Ya’Allah!” when astonished,
or “ya’ani” for “I mean”
— a crushed glass
under the feet still shines.
But the child of Hebron sleeps
with the thud of her brothers falling
and the long sorrow of the color red.